Re: freeze exception for gcc-4.5 (i386, amd64 only)
Hello,
Sorry for cross-posting if not appropriate, I'm just preserving the e-mail
headers.
On Friday 20 August 2010 11:34:51 Neil McGovern wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 05:17:32PM +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> > >I'm not sure there are any in the original, plugins and a greater
> > >optimisation level certainly aren't things which will solve specific
> > >problems. Could you highlight them for me?
> >
> > Having these features available for developers, and having not to
> > wait two years until these appear in a stable release is worth the
> > update. Exposing a new compiler version to upstream developers
> > helps reducing the delta between upstream and debian packages. Yes I
> > think this is worth having it in squeeze.
>
> I don't think that stable is the place for doing active development.
I realize that being a Release Manager, part of the task assigned is
deciding precisely things like this, which is appropriate for which
distribution (at least for the stable).
However, I don't think that it makes much sense to say that stable is not a
place for doing active development. In places in which I work or worked in
the past, using anything other than stable (Debian, Scientific Linux,
whatever) is not an option, and so the development is done with whatever
tools happen to be there. Is it a better solution to force these people to
use the package from the next testing or backports, if they need it for any
reason?
I can agree that by Debian standards using 4.5 to compile the whole archive
with 4.5 might be considered "risky" (at least for some archs), but I fail
to see what's the harm of shipping 4.5 as an *option*.
> Given that there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason for gcc4.5 in
> squeeze, I'm afraid it's not going to make it for this release.
The argument can be reversed. There is no compelling reason for a developer
to use 4.4 series when 4.5 was released 4 months ago (which will be probably
more than 6 to a year by the time the release happens), if there is not a
specific problem with the new version.
Fast forward 1.5 to 2 years, when Squeeze is about to be EOL'd. Why would
you use software 3 years old, with maintainance releases maybe stopped since
long, with several major versions released since then?
Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo@gmail.com>
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